Ordering Aviation Gasoline in Canada; liters vs. gallons

I wish I could say that all my wisdom in flying is due to the fact that I read it in an flying magazine, airplane manual or learned it from listening to a wise old flight instructor but the truth of the matter is that I have learned a great deal the hard way and let’s just keep it at that.

Today I learned an important lesson and I want to pass this along to you. When ordering aviation gasoline in Canada, make sure you either a) specify U.S. GALLONS and let the FBO do the conversion or even better b) specify the fuel order in LITERS.

In case you don’t have this conversion memorized:

1 liter = 0.264 US gallons

or

1 US gallon = 3.785 liters

It doesn’t make a difference if you are ordering JetA or 100LL, the conversion is the same (weight of course is different with those two fuels) So if you are ordering say, 200 gallons of Avgas that would be 757 liters. 200 liters of gasoline is only about 52 gallons. That could make a a little bit of a difference for your flight wouldn’t you say?

Now the part I did learn and remember from that wise old flight instructor is to always verify the amount of gas you ordered and how much actually made it into your airplane so thankfully crisis was adverted.

sir would you settle a argument,
a litre of gas in canada is about 4 1/2 to a gallon and we are paying a $ 140 per litre which is measured by the imperial gallon and the US is measured by the american gallon are we not paying about the same price as the americans

You’ll be happy to know that you’re not the only pilot to get tripped up by this. In 1983, a 757 ran out of gas and made a forced landing thanks in no small part to an error due to the unit conversion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider .